Strange Big Moon, The Japan and India Journals: 1960-1964 by Joanne Kyger

North Atlantic Books, Berkeley
c.2000

Anne Waldman’s introduction to Strange Big Moon describes Joann Kyger’s journal, part travelogue, part poetic and personal introspection, as a “surprisingly, surreptitiously, feminist tract as well.” Living and writing as she did, however, with and among the greatest male writers of both the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat movement, Kyger’s exertion of such a strong yet subtle female presence becomes a clear necessity in her pursuit of a poetic voice. Newly married to poet Gary Snyder and relocated to Kyoto in January of 1960 (when her journal begins), Kyger is almost immediately struggling to retain her sense of voice and self. The snatches and fragments of poetry found throughout the journals, however, bear little of the insecurity exposed here; rather, they are the foundations upon which Kyger, upon her return from Japan, would later complete and publish a seminal collection, The Tapestry and the Web. Adopting an approach similar to that of her San Francisco Renaissance predecessors Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, Kyger draws upon history and myth in an imaginative remembrance of women before her—women who lend Kyger the experience to maintain control of art and domesticity alike. Kyger becomes preoccupied with the power of weaving (a historically female occupation), and echoes of the above excerpt resound in Tapestry’s re-writing of Penelope and the Odysseus myth. Returning to Walden’s assessment of Kyger’s “surreptitious” feminism, it is fascinating to watch it shine forth as, with passing years, young Joanne develops a foothold in her own domestic experience with Gary Snyder and simultaneously redefines her male predecessors’ poetic ideologies to plant and justify incredibly powerful women at the heart of lyric history.